Become a Blue Planet Archive contributor

Thank you so much for your interest in our stock photo library. We welcome any aspiring photographers and artists.

We are a photographer’s agency. Blue Planet Archive was founded by a photographer and has been run by photographers. I am a photographer myself and care about your images. Unlike other agencies, we carefully select images for our stock photo library.

Headline: Capitalized simple short description of the main subject in the picture – It can be a combination of common name and scientific species name, a name of the location, a name of the event, a name of the object, a name of the activity, etc. Use search engine friendly vertical bars to separate the words. Commas are acceptable as well. The headline should summarize what it is in the picture. Please do not get confused with “Title” field. Title field is used for the file name – in most case, the image ID.

Captions: We work hard to provide accurate information about our images to our clients, so the accuracy is very important when captioning. If you misspell a word, your images will be buried deep into our huge library of pictures and never be found by a search. For this reason, we highly recommend to copy & paste latin names or common names from a trusty source such as WIKIPEDIA, IUCN Species List.

The minimum caption submitted with any types of photographs should include: common species name, scientific species name in Latin, specific location (for example: dive site, marine reserve, marine sanctuary, national park, etc.), city/town, State/region/province, country, Sea and Ocean. It is also important that you state any noticeable animal behaviors or anatomical features in an image because the caption directly affects our search results as well as our clients’ decisions accordingly. If your subject is endemic to a certain area or listed as vulnerable, threatened, or endangered in that area, please include that information in the caption. If you’re not sure, check the IUCN site as well as the Wikipedia. If your image includes a person or people with model release(s), please add MR at the end of the caption. Use PR for property release if you obtained.

Keywords: Please do not spam all kinds of keywords, instead, just type in only the relevant keywords that are directly depicted in the picture. Use singular word than plural. You should be able to imagine how the picture actually looks like by just reading through the keywords.

Sublocation, City, State/Province and Country: . List the location of the photo. As for the country, the United States of America should be USA or United States. Never use U.S.A. ISO Country Code is not required but you can put either 2 letters or 3 letters if you like.

Disclosure: You are required to disclose any manipulation which you have done to enhance over all quality of the shots. You are also required to disclose if the animal is shot in captivity or it’s a captive release. We need proper and correct information about your images as we deal mainly with the clients who’s main focus is natural history. Following words or abbreviations should be added at the end of your caption/desription if appropriate: captive or (c), captive release or (cr) (a tamed or captured animal placed unrestrained in a natural setting such as “rent-a-dolphin”), digital composite or (dc) (two or more images combined digitally).

2. Submit 5-10 sample pictures for Quality Review.

Please upload 5-10 sample pictures to our ftp server for the Quality Review using the following login info, and we will report back to you for the result in a couple of days. Please make sure that your sample pictures meet all the requirement of our Submission Guidelines for image quality, captioning and other photo metadata.

Server: ftp.photoshelter.comPort: 21Please use passive mode

Username: qualityPassword: review

This is an ftp login, not a website login. You will need an ftp client software to access our ftp server. We recommend FileZila, Fetch, and Transmit. You can also use an internet file transfer service such as “We Transfer” if you prefer.

3. Sign up on Photographer Agreement.

Once you pass the Quality Review, we’ll send you a copy of your Photographer Agreement for you to sign up. The entire sign up process will be done online. No need to print out, sign and mail the agreement. You will receive a pdf copy of the counter-signed agreement via email after you finish your part.

4. Receive your personalized ftp login info and start submitting.

We’ll create your own ftp folder directory on our server, and you can start submitting your pictures by uploading your images and folder full of images into that directory, or you can use the aforementioned free file transfer service.

If you have any questions, please contact us. Looking forward to seeing your great pictures.